


Mayfeld's Stolen Secret

by The Corellian Pirate (Turhaya_Hundteth)



Series: The Extract Collection [3]
Category: Star Wars - All Media Types, Star Wars Original Trilogy, The Mandalorian (TV)
Genre: Adult Content, Alternate Origin Story, Black Markets, Crimes & Criminals, Dark Comedy, Espionage, Fanfiction, Gangsters, Mandalorian
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-07-05
Updated: 2020-07-05
Packaged: 2021-03-05 05:41:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25079287
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Turhaya_Hundteth/pseuds/The%20Corellian%20Pirate
Summary: Four friends sit around a table drinking, recording their conversation in a transcript for posterity. It seems that Mayfeld has quite the tale to tell about how he joined Ranzar Malk's crew, and got his hands on some of the biggest, darkest secrets the Empire had to offer...A short extract from The "Beskar Heart" Series.Language warning. Adult content.
Series: The Extract Collection [3]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/1816246
Kudos: 5





	Mayfeld's Stolen Secret

**Author's Note:**

> This work is a chapter extract from a larger fictional series "Beskar Heart".
> 
> Following from the end of The Mandalorian Season 1, Din Djarin continues his journey sometime after the showdown with Moff Gideon on Nevarro. With the baby now entrusted to Cara Dune, his flight from danger goes horribly wrong. Stranded with a savage stranger, the Mandalorian must find a way to get to Cara and the child before Gideon and his men kill them all.

_“If you wish to be the king of the jungle, it’s not enough to act like a king. You must be the king. And there can be no doubt. Because doubt causes chaos and one’s own demise.”_

_\- The Gentlemen (2019)_

***

TRANSCRIPT BEGINS:

Tur: Want another pour?

Mayfeld: Nah, I’m good for now. If I keep drinking at this rate, I’m not even going notice the rain on the way back.

Cara: Keeps the cold out at least. I’ll be surprised if you’re still standing by the end of the night, Inky.

Din: She’ll be fine. I’ve seen her take enough drugs to kill a Bantha.

Tur: Had plenty of practice running around the streets of Coronet as a teenager. Unlike you pros, I wasn’t training anything at that age except my liver.

Mayfeld: Yeah, well, we’re not as professional as you’d think. Shit… Both me and the bucket-head ran with the same fucking crew.

Tur: I keep forgetting that.

Mayfeld: One day you’re going tell me the Alzoc III story, Mando.

Din: I’m not proud of the time I spent on Ran’s crew. I don’t like talking about it.

Tur: One day you will.

Din: You think so?

Tur: Eventually you’ll have to forgive yourself for it.

Mayfeld: Ouch! Tur hits back with the riddle talk. You been at the mushrooms again?

Tur: Nah, just the good shit Chewie left me.

Cara: What about you, Red? You ever talk about your days with the crew?

Mayfeld: Sure, I ain’t got nothing to hide, and unlike Tin Can, I’m glad I ended up on Ran’s crew. Got me out of the Empire. Those bastards were worse than any outlaw gang by far.

Cara: Really? Sounds like you’ve got a story.

Din: Let’s have it.

Mayfeld: What you have to understand going into the story is that it wasn’t easy to get out of the Empire. You don’t really leave. They don’t let you. You escape…

***

The Empire are dirty.

And I don’t just mean world-killing, Dark Force using, fascist dirty. I mean _fucking corrupt_.

All the shit they throw everyone else into the slammer for? They’re up to their jack-booted eyeballs in it. Those freaking Death Stars don’t come cheap, I can tell you that. Ask Tin Can about all the beskar they took. How else do you think they fund all the war they wage?

But it’s not just the war funding that was going on.

Half the officers had their own crooked side-lines too. You’d be surprised how much of the Imp’s inventory got sold on the black market. That was the small stuff. Spice running, coaxium smuggling, slave trading, selling intel, and even illegal gambling and whore houses.

You name it, there was an officer somewhere who was trading in it.

What most people don’t understand about the Empire is that it’s really easy to get suckered in, especially as a dumb kid. But those assholes do _not_ let you leave. If you’re gonna get out of that hell, you need to put years of planning into it. Breaking out of prison seems easy by comparison.

Thankfully, I’m not as dumb as I look, and while I was with the Imps, I managed to get myself noticed. Started moving into specialised units. I was never a total specialist, but I was good with a wider range of weapons than most, and that in itself was special in the Empire. Most stupid Troopers only ever do one thing their whole life, and it makes them predictable and slow. 

One day I ended up getting transferred to a security detail that was working for the ISB. Basically, we were bodyguards for the some of the highest-ranking officials in the intelligence game.

The guy that ran that unit was as dirty as they get. We called him ‘The Skull’. Dude was brutal, and up to his eyeballs in illegal trades. One of the biggest players in the Imperial black market, and I ended up working for him.

The Skull had reached his position through a combination of hard-work, and a ruthless reputation on the battlefield. Rumour has it he got his nickname when he crushed someone’s head with his bare hands. And it wasn’t even an enemy. It was one of his fellow recruits in _combat training_.

I know Tur has spoken about Burning Day, and the animals they send out for extermination missions. The Skull made the twelve bastards Tur took out on Corellia look like children. I heard some of his stories, and I’ll tell you that the stuff they did on Burning Day, they consider _fun._

Why they requested me, I’ll never know, but I’ve got a suspicion. It won’t surprise you that I had a smart mouth, even back then. I’d been in trouble more than once. Part of the reason I kept getting transferred. I’d also shown my superiors I could take a beating.

The Skull figured I had a rebellious streak, but I could probably keep my mouth shut, even under punishment. I also had a nice, wide network of top-end connections from all the units I’d served in, and he was itching to get his fingers into it. After a few years, he had me involved in all sorts of illegal shit.

It seemed he liked me, but you never knew with that guy, and I was always (at least at some level) terrified of him. The rest of his squad he used as muscle. They were dumb and savage. Me? He had a very special job for me…

Being the best sharpshooter, and a weapons expert, The Skull had me as _his_ personal security.

I was his bodyguard, his assistant, and his negotiator. I was the one member of his stupid squad who could actually think on their feet and not sound like a fucking Gamorrean when I talked. I ended up making decisions and doing deals on his behalf when it was too small for The Skull to bother with. Helped him make more businesses deals than he could have on his own time.

As his right-hand man, I became indispensable, and I was deep inside the Gundark’s nest.

See, his thirst for power kept growing, and he kept making bigger and bigger deals, wanting more and more business. When you get an organisation like the Empire, it attracts the power hungry. You’d think it would be full of yes-men, but that’s not the case with officers.

They’re ambitious. They’re greedy. They _all_ want to be the Alpha. But you know as well as I do, that there can be only one Emperor at a time. I reckon that’s why there’s only ever two Sith. Stops the apprentices challenging the master.

When you get too many little Jawas taking everything in sight, eventually stuff starts to run out. Spice mines start to dry up. Coaxium supplies run low. The cartels and smugglers they use start to get nervous. Inevitably, the officers involved start fighting over territory.

If the pressure of all that wasn’t enough, the whole time you’ve got a threat hanging over your head. The biggest, most bad-ass threat of them all.

Darth Vader.

That motherfucker was known for Force choking officers out of commission. Almost on a daily basis at one point. The dirty officers in charge of the operations were in continual fear of being busted by the wheezing bastard in black.

As things started heating up across the galaxy with the Rebellion, it wasn’t just the officers getting freaked out. The rest of us started feeling the pressure too. I’d seen things. Things I can never unsee. I’d done things. I’d stood back and let others do things. Honestly, I didn’t know what was more horrific: the black-market shit, or the sanctioned genocide.

I needed out, and ironically it was one of The Skull’s sidelines that gave me a way out.

The boss had decided to sell off his spice operations. I think the grumpy old bastard thought Vader was on to him and was ditching business. One of the brass from the ISB, who was also into spice, started negotiating a deal hoping to monopolise the market.

But when you play in the Sarlacc pit, you’ve got to watch out for the tentacles.

The ISB brass had a junior officer who took a fancy to the top job. When Brass found out the price The Skull wanted for his operation, he decided to get Junior to stir up slave rebellions in the mines to devalue the business.

But Brass wasn’t as smart as he thought. Junior decided paying The Skull for his business was a sucker’s game and thought he might take it for free. Along with the head of his boss. In a huge power play, Junior killed Brass, and took over all the ISB’s black trade.

The Skull wasn’t as stupid as Brass had been. He knew what Junior must have done. There was a big shipment the boss was running as his last hurrah before he got out. Junior and The Skull had each other’s numbers. Shit was about to get messy. Junior got it in his head to knock it off the shipment while it was in transit, and you’ll never guess who he hired to do the job.

Ranzar Malk.

Having Tin Can around had given Ran a pretty good name, even if the Mando was no longer on the team. Let me tell you, Princess, in the underworld – reputation sticks. I’m sure the Mando and the Pirate can tell you all about the damage a good name can do.

‘Ranzar Malk’ had become synonymous with the word ‘Mandalorian’, and Ran was stupid and greedy enough to still be trading on it.

Somehow, they got the job done with nothing more than ruthlessness and sheer numbers. They brought help. Mercs and assorted bounty hunters. Worst scum of the galaxy. Seems you’d rubbed off on them, Din, and not in the best of ways. Qin and Xi’an had always been psychos, but the bucket-head had left a sour taste in their Twi’lek mouths, and they had no problem with who they killed or how much chaos they caused.

The shipment was lost. But Ran had no fucking idea _who_ Junior had paid him to rob.

People were starting to think the The Skull was losing his grip. If he couldn’t handle his own spice, how was he supposed to keep the rest of their dirty trades covered up? My boss always hit back, and hit back hard, but the rumourmongering had made him particularly sensitive. Made him doubt his own capabilities, and he started getting paranoid about being stabbed in the back.

Fortunately for both Ran and The Skull, Qin found out the word, and clued in Ran to who he had just ripped off. Ran did the ballsiest thing I had ever seen, and actually contacted my boss. Apologised for the whole thing and explained that Junior had never told him who he was being paid to hit. Ran returned the spice shipment and offered The Skull his services to repay the debt.

Big. Fucking. Mistake.

While it saved Ran’s ass in the short term, he’d just been pulled down into the sink-hole with the rest of us. The Skull was pissed off with Junior and decided the first repayment of the debt would be to get Ran to bump him off as a show of loyalty.

But my boss was just as bad as Junior in keeping his Sabacc cards close to his chest, and once again Ran’s team were missing one piece of critical information: who Junior really was. You’d think Ran would have learnt his fucking lesson the first time.

Junior was the son of one of the Imperial Navy’s top dogs. I don’t know if he was legitimate, because they didn’t share the same name. Maybe the kid was born in one of the dirty brothels owned by the Empire? Maybe his parents were young and stupid teenagers and had their little ‘love mistake’ hidden? Maybe it was just so Junior could make his own way? Who fucking knows?

Junior’s dear old daddy was none other than Firmus Piett.

Now, that name might not mean anything to you, but Piett eventually became the admiral of Vader’s own fucking flagship. The guy was serious business, and right in Sith’s inner circle.

The boss had just rubbed out a serious target, which risked bringing Vader down on our heads. Other officers started to figure out that Ran’s ‘Mando’ had taken off long ago, and the crew wasn’t as good as they had said. It also set off the rest of the greedy officers against each other. The Rebellion was getting stronger, the black market was suffering, and Junior’s death had set them all into a panic.

And if Piett ever found out it was Ran and The Skull that took out his kid… we were all dead.

I must admit, Mando, when we first met… I was suspicious of you because of what Xi’an said about you enjoying it. Shit, I even stuck it to you about getting off on death when you busted me out of jail.

But, Din, you are nothing… nothing compared to The Skull. With no business relationships to have to foster any more, he had a free reign of terror in which he could vent all his self-doubt and paranoia. As far as The Skull was concerned, all his former business partners were now enemies.

The black-market apocalypse was nigh, and in the frenzy, the Rancors stared to eat each other.

And Ran? He was right in the thick of it. Indebted to The Skull and with no way out, his crew were knocking off goods from Imperial officers left, right and centre. Half the time I was working with them on the jobs. And corpses were turning up everywhere.

But the more the Imps panicked and killed, the more they risked the worst threat of all. Piett was still baying for blood. Vader started to figure out not everything was clean in the ISB with all the killing going on, and like everything else in this fucking galaxy, there were digital data trails everywhere linking everything to everyone.

What you’ve gotta remember is, the Empire were still in power and were looking to stay that way. Even though shit was getting brutal with the Rebellion, no one ever thought they would actually succeed.

My plan to get out wasn’t that much different to what we pulled on the Acclamator – copy and destroy data. If I couldn’t obliterate my own tracks, I’d need leverage on all the players. Shit, I’d introduced The Skull to half his network. I had access to the ISB databases, and I knew every detail of every little crooked operation that came within a parsec of the ISB.

The secrets had to be big enough to ensure my survival, and I hit the Canto Bight jackpot in the worst possible way. The secrets I found out were _huge_. Piett. Junior. Even Vader. I found files on _everything._

I had to destroy the database and all my digital tracks, and the only way I could figure out how to do that was with a data virus. I couldn’t just blow shit up like Inky, because I would have been caught and sentenced to death. It was going to have to be done by a hack.

The virus had to be good enough to wipe out the most elite Imperial network in the galaxy, even if only temporarily. I’m no Pirate, but I can pull a pretty decent hack when I want to. Hardware was always more my scene, but when you’re up against the wall, you learn how to do things you never thought were possible before. But it was all new to me, and I couldn’t risk testing it in the network, or I’d be found.

So, I had an untested virus program I had just written, and a data disc of the dirtiest Imperial secrets in existence. But I wasn’t as smart as I thought. Or the ISB network wasn’t as secure as I thought. Or Piett knew more than he let on…. or Darth Vader was just really good with using the Force.

I have no idea what the fuck went wrong, but somehow Vader found out that someone had been stealing ISB data. What’s worse, in the investigation, he found out all about The Skull and every other corrupt bastard in the Empire.

I hadn’t had a chance to deploy my virus yet. All I wanted was a way out, but I had just signed my own death warrant.

Cross The Skull, and he will make you beg for death.

The closer you are to him, the bigger he considered the betrayal. You think Pirates are hell bent on revenge with that ‘blood for blood’ shit? The Skull never just got revenge. He made an example out of you, and he enjoyed taking his time to torture you in the most savage ways imaginable. That guy not only played with his food before eating it, he fed it, walked it, washed it, and tucked it into fucking bed.

One morning, I went to see the boss. He’d asked me to meet me in the ship’s hangar.

When I walked in, I immediately knew something was wrong. Ran and his crew were there, and I didn’t know about it. I was supposed to be watching The Skull’s back as his bodyguard, and the fact he had a meeting without me, set off the alarm bells.

I stopped in my tracks the minute I saw them all standing at the other end of the hangar. They all looked up at once, including my boss, and I knew when I looked in his eyes, that he had contracted Ran to torture and kill me.

I ran. It wasn’t brave, and it wasn’t even smart – I was stuck on an Empire ship that my boss knew every fucking inch of. Where was I going to go? There was nowhere to even hide. I ran, and I prayed to no one in particular that something, or someone, would save me.

Someone did save me. Vader.

Him and Piett had come for The Skull. Now, you’d think the Sith Lord coming for us would have made matters worse, but I was actually _saved_ by Darth Vader’s attack. I never saw their Star Destroyer. Our ship just started taking fire. The next thing I knew we had to evacuate. Stuff was blowing up. Imps running everywhere. Sirens. Fire. Panic. Screaming. Everyone running for the escape pods. Including me.

There I was running down the hallway. This was my chance – in the chaos I could get away, and if Vader kept up his barrage, it’d get The Skull off my tail.

Running…

Thinking I was finally going to be free…

I was almost there…

And then…

The Skull.

Right in front of me. I knew I couldn’t win. I was about to die.

It was almost like time stopped and everything went quiet. To this day I couldn’t tell you why I did it. I was just acting on instinct. I reached into my pocket and pulled out a disc.

The disc with the virus I had been working on.

I started talking off the top of my head, saying it was the disc with stolen data. I was giving it to him as insurance. Told him the only reason Darth Vader was so mad about it, was that it contained all his dirty little secrets, and the only reason I had taken it was so that we had a way to get back at Palpatine’s right-hand man for crushing our business.

I told him that if he saw what was on this disc, it would immediately put both Piett and Vader out of commission.

I told The Skull he’d be _the most powerful man in the Empire_.

My smart mouth saved my life that day. He took the disc, and was staring at it in his hand, like I had just handed him the fucking keys to the entire galaxy. Even at the end, the lure of power still held him. Power over Darth Vader.

With all the shit coming down around his ears, that lunatic must have thought that little disc could turn it all around to his advantage. Probably thought _he_ could be the next Vader. I swear I could see it in his eyes. The Skull and The Emperor, together.

Next to the tantalising secrets on the disc, killing and torturing me mustn’t have seemed important anymore.

And just like that…

The crazy bastard turned around and walked away without another word.

The ship was still going down.

I should have headed to the escape pods. I should have followed procedure. But my instincts had already saved me once, and I was on a roll. One name popped into my head: Ranzar Malk.

With his dirty sidelines scuppered, and no Mando name to trade on anymore, Ran was just as screwed as I was. He’d pissed off as many Imps as I had, and I knew his days of living large were over.

Perhaps he could use an experienced Triggerman on his crew?

Against all better logic, I headed back into the hangar, and ran for Ran’s ship…

***

Cara: Well?

Mayfeld: Well what?

Cara: Did the virus work?

Mayfeld: I probably wouldn’t be here if it didn’t. I knew my boss couldn’t resist sticking that disc of mine in a drive to find out whatever it was he thought I’d uncovered about the big man in black.

Din: What happened?

Mayfeld: The virus must have scrambled the network at least long enough for me to escape and stay hidden. The only proof I have is that they never came after me, and I never turned up on the Guild’s radar.

Cara: What about your boss?

Mayfeld: I guess Vader must have killed The Skull. I didn’t try and find out. I escaped. That was enough.

Tur: Hang on a minute… What did happen to the data disc? The real one with the secrets you stole…

***Silence*********

Cara: _You’ve still got it?!_

Tur: Holy fucking Hondo!

Cara: Actually, you know what? I don’t want to know…

Tur: Mate, you’re a _fucking genius_ , with balls the size of Yavin.

Cara: Actually, I do want to know…

Mayfeld: You know what, Din? I reckon Xi’an answered this question the best once on the Razor Crest.

Din: How so?

Mayfeld: ‘A lady never tells’…

***Laughter********

**Thank you for reading! If you liked it, please hit the kudos button below to let me know.**


End file.
